The present invention relates to a gas turbine vane, in particular a vane of an aircraft engine.
Gas turbines, such as aircraft engines for example, are made up of multiple subassemblies, namely a fan, preferably multiple compressors, a combustion chamber, and preferably multiple turbines. For improving the efficiency and the working range of such gas turbines it is necessary to optimize all subsystems or components of the gas turbine. The present invention relates to the improvement of the flow-around behavior of gas turbine vanes, in particular of rotary vanes of a compressor of the gas turbine.
As a rule, compressors of gas turbines are made up of multiple stages, which are situated axially consecutively in the flow, each stage being formed by a rotary vane ring formed by rotary vanes assigned to a rotor. The rotary vanes forming the rotary vane ring and assigned to the rotor rotate together with the rotor vis-à-vis the stationary guide vanes and a likewise stationary housing. For reducing manufacturing costs, an increasingly compact compressor design having the lowest possible number of stages is aimed for. Furthermore, the overall pressure conditions within the gas turbine and thus the pressure ratios between the individual stages increase due to the constant optimization of the efficiency and the working range of such compressors.
Increasingly larger stage pressure ratios and an increasingly smaller number of stages inevitably result in higher circumferential velocities of the rotating components of the compressor. The rotational speeds, which increase with the reduction of the number of stages, result in increasing mechanical stresses in particular on the rotary vanes rotating together with the rotor and in supersonic flow conditions within the vane grid. Such flow conditions require an optimized, aerodynamic design of the gas turbine vanes.